The Irreparable Abandonment of a Thinking Being
by Saboteuse
Summary: Chronicling some of Valjean's time in Toulon: Chenildieu is assigned to Valjean, in what will be a five-year partnership.
1. Travail

_A/N: Do not hesitate to correct any errors concerning historical accuracy!_

* * *

_1810._

He'd never even gotten to eat it.

That was the worst part.

He'd stolen to put something good and nourishing and warm with calories into his pained, spasming stomach, he'd thieved for his seven little nieces and nephews, between whose lips food had not passed for several days, he had lacerated his arm and bruised his fist––and he had not even gotten to eat it, nor his family to taste it. They did not even know that he was going to steal; they did not know about the existence of the loaf; they would never truly know of it, not in the way Valjean had in the moment between his breaking of the glass, and his seizure by the hand of fate––made flesh in the sturdy appendage of Maubert Isabeau.

The definition of theft is taking that which belongs to someone else. It is true that Isabeau was a baker by profession, with a right to sell his bread for a profit. But did not Jean Valjean, too, have a right to eat? He and his sister worked; they toiled. It was not their fault that their labor was fruitless. Had he not earned the right to the loaf, for the sake of whose market value he was now a drudge of the law?

Jean Valjean was now past these thoughts. A dull anger had succeeded them, an anger that melded itself with his natural strength, coiling in with his muscles in an unconscious bond: hate, work, and muscle memory. Valjean's brain was distributed in his biceps, his pectorals, his mighty legs, not to the diminishment of his true cerebral worth, but in auxiliary capacity; a dormant rage that substituted for thought.

Jean Valjean didn't have a name––not really. His surname was a mockery of a patronymic, further mutilated by the contraction and the idiom. His father was a ghost of a ghost, a shadow left behind by a common name that belonged to scores of unremarkable, indistinguishable people. His father was nothing; so he, Jean, was thus the issue of nothing. Valjean, for all its phonetic hints of _valeur_, was merely a false coin, a cheap homespun facsimile: _voilà Jean_. Who would care enough about his father's entrance to proclaim it? _There's Jean_––what rot!

A man with a punny surname had recently been coupled to the man with none. Chenildieu was a short, agitated man, willowy but weak in frame, with a crop of chestnut hair that, when closely shaven, looked red. He was squatting on the dusty ground, with fluttering hands, while his partner, the man to whom he had been "married," was leaning pensively against a rock wall in the quarry. Jean Valjean had once, long ago, been the younger of a pair; now he was an inveterate convict. If Chenildieu was febrile, Valjean was phlegmatic, his skin beaten by the sun, his shoulders broad, his shorn hair dark, his gaze darker. At the moment his wearied lids were closed, peaceful under the rough arches of his eyebrows and sheltered beneath the umbra of his red _bonnet_. He was trying to rest.

Chenildieu made his way over to his companion and joined him at the wall, panting. He pulled off his green cap and stared at it. Raking his fingers through the sweaty bed of his scalp, he scowled and said petulantly, "I don't see why they've got to be wool. Wool! This is the bloody Côte d'Azur, for God's sake, not the Alps." He stood and paced, fanning himself vigorously, before adding, "I'm from the Loire, and it was cooler there, by God; we didn't have to deal with this nonsense."

Valjean tugged his own itchy, woollen hat down over his eyes and yanked hard on his half of their chain. He already had a headache from the August humidity, and Chenildieu's grating plaints were only making it worse. He heard Chenildieu fall with a thud and lifted a corner of the cap to see his colleague on his knees nearby, nursing a skinned hand.

"That wasn't nice, Jean," Chenildieu said in a voice as thin and taut as wire, his lip curling. His hands shook, but there was no way he was going to hit Jean-the-Jack, the strongest man out of four thousand.

"Then stop complaining, J'ni'Dieu," replied the larger convict, rubbing his knuckes into his eyes and seeking refuge once more in his makeshift hood.

"Complaining! You––that's rich! Your hat's _red _and mine's _green_––I've earned the right!"

A fist slammed into the ground, leaving a deep imprint in the dirt. "I'm a lifer too! You shut your face, lightweight!"

Chenildieu trembled, but gritted his teeth and pressed on, "No, you're not! If you'd just cool your heels, they'd let you go eventu––"

"_Eventually!_" Valjean bellowed, losing what little patience he had left, which wasn't much. "I've been here since I was twenty-five! They might as well make me a greencap and be done with it!"

"No, you look here!" said Je-nie-Dieu, trying to match Valjean's lung power and failing. "You think I give a rat's ass how many years you've racked up for escape attempts? It's there in your sentence, your freedom, it's waiting! Mine, it's gone completely! _This_––" he gestured at the manille riveted to his ankle––"this, it's _never _coming off! Not until I'm in the ground! So don't you dare bully me, you lucky goddamn oaf! Or I'll––"

Valjean would have bloodied Chenildieu's face to make him shut up and surely received a flogging had the latter not given a look of such sincere, abject terror, in the moment that Valjean drew back his fist, that he relented. He could not strike a man who looked afraid. As if to illustrate that no good deed goes unpunished, it was at that moment that Valjean's headache kicked in like a mule hoof to the temple.

"Son of a bitch," cursed Valjean. He groaned. He looked over at the cowering Chenildieu and his mien softened a bit. There was a grain of truth in what the bony, restless little convict was saying. No need to thump him. He'd always sworn to be kind to the newer convicts assigned to him, and this was the first time he had broken his oath. He remembered how terrified he'd been when he'd first arrived and been given over to an _ancien_. He had to put the younger convict at his ease. He could not have been more than a couple of years Valjean's junior, but in bagne years, he was a newborn.

"You said you were from the Loire Valley?" Valjean asked.

Chenildieu goggled at him, but accepted this change of events. "Yes. Well, that's where I hail from, anyway. Born and raised there. I haven't been there since I was seventeen, though, tell you the truth. Been living in Lyon. And you?"

"Brie. Faverolles."

"Honed your trade there, did you?" Chenildieu said, in what he thought was an ingratiating manner.

"Excuse me?"

Chenildieu froze. "Never mind. Nothing."

"There _was_ no 'trade,' Lyonnais. I pruned trees. I shot game that wasn't mine sometimes. That was all. No bands of city footpads in Faverolles. I don't know from Lyon."

"Well, I was really in Caluire, outside of the city proper," Chenildieu said confessionally, "and me and my mates were no big-time crooks or any of that. My main man Edouard was the only competent housebreaker between us, knew how to pick a lock real good. Me and Charlot, we'd just smash in the windows." He chuckled, then grew grave. "Never got very handy with tools. I wouldn't even be able to jimmy a door if you gave me a crowbar. I realize now that that puts me right up shit creek as far as ever getting out of here is concerned."

"You said yesterday that you were here for murder."

"Yeah, and you for theft. I remember, Jeannot. I'm getting there. So this little snot, Richard, he tried to blackmail us for a bigger cut––one of our gang was wanted by the cops, see, and Richard was threatening to put them on his trail. Lord, but he was stupid. Too dumb to live. Me and Edouard both took him out together, but it was just me that took the ra––"

Valjean sprang up suddenly, and Chenildieu followed suit without knowing why. The reason became evident to him at once: a _garde-chiourme_ had rounded the blind corner that was formed by a stony outcropping to their right and was nearly upon them. The storm hit, and a baton descended on Valjean's shoulder.

"Break ended seven minutes ago!" the guard barked.

Valjean expired air with a deep grunt and pleaded remonstratively to his overseer, "We didn't hear the bell! Pardon us!" He spoke the truth, as it happens. He had lost track of time during their fight, and even now could not hear the sound of work, exactly, only chattering. He watched hopelessly as the guard proceeded to deal Chenildieu a blow on the elbow. The newer convict howled in spite of himself.

"Put on your cap, 38576!" the guard ordered. It took Chenildieu, still unused to his new numerical name, a moment to understand that the guard was addressing him; once this was grasped, he looked wildly around; then, at last, he realized that he was still clutching it. He scrambled to replace it on his head, while favoring his elbow, which, incidentally, was on the same arm as the hand he had skinned.

Valjean lowered his head. He knew that they would be harsher on Chenildieu, to break him in; but he was just so _sickly_ looking––mightn't they lay off the poor unlucky bastard?

"I can't believe we forgot," Valjean hissed to his partner between clenched teeth, after the guard had departed. "I can't _believe _we just wandered _off_ like that and let the shepherds come after us with their crooks. You don't ever give them a reason to do that to you. Come on." And, towing Chenildieu after him, he went back to join the prisoners assigned to the main work site in the quarry.

Heaving blocks of stone, Chenildieu complained about his elbow, his hand, his back. Valjean smiled indulgently at his greenness and asked him about Lyon when they had a moment to catch their breath. His headache had melted somewhat with the dropping pressure of the air, and in tandem, the sun had mercifully begun to hide behind some anvil clouds.

"Lyon, it's...have you ever been to Paris?"

Valjean bit his lip. "My sister and her...her son lived there...as of ten years ago." He turned away. "That's all. No."

"I did, once. It just goes on forever. Lyon's like Paris, except there's hills, and two rivers instead of one. If I could get sprung, that's where I'd go. Not Caluire-et-Cuire, but the city. How about you?" he asked tentatively. "Where would you go?"

"I don't know," said Valjean tersely. "I don't have a fucking clue." He clenched his hands. "There's nothing _there_. There's _nothing_." He shifted heavily onto his feet.

Chenildieu laughed bad-humoredly. "No one wants _nothing._"

"Look, I'm not saying I want _this!_" Valjean cried. "But it's all fucked. What do you mean, where would I go?" He paused, then said harshly, "Look, when I escaped those four times, I wasn't going anywhere. I was running from the––this––this place isn't a _town._ It's a––I don't have the words. It's misery. That's what I was running from. But it follows you. It's the same everywhere. You can't escape from it."

Chenildieu shook his head. But he thought.

They returned to their work. Hefting big damn stones, it sure seemed like a bloody metaphor for something; maybe Jean was right. Chenildieu had only been here a week, and every breath seemed like a draught from a bitter cup. _Valjean_ was what happened when you became saturated with Toulon's cordial. The red of his garments seemed primed for a conflagration, and Chenildieu clenched his jaw. Someday, he thought, before it poisons me, I will set myelf on fire.


	2. Souper

_A/N: Hail, hail, the gang's all here! The other canon forçats, Cochepaille and Brevet, in this chapter._

* * *

Beans were a constant in the world of the almighty mess hall. They hovered just above the baseline of sub-mediocrity, which was reserved for the bread, and they were more stable than the meat, which, although sometimes exciting, could be foul. The wine, too, was a welcomed soporific. Not that they needed help to get to sleep, exhausted as they were, but a blanket of warmth and gossamer-thin peace was a much-esteemed augment to the rough-edged collapse they would otherwise undergo as they retired to their planks.

"Oh, you're eating a weev––" Chenildieu ventured.

Valjean chewed and swallowed the large and apparently weevily mouthful of bread. "Am I?"

Chenildieu looked at his hands, then back at his bowl. "You...you were." He peered at Valjean with an air of embarrassment, even contrition. "Does one stop picking them out eventually, comrade?"

Valjean took a gulp of wine. "For sure," he said absently, and raised his soup bowl to his lips.

Chenildieu cringed in disgust, then laid his arm on the table and leaned in conspiratorially. "Listen, Jeannot. How long have you been here, again?" he asked over the sound of a loud slurp.

"Fourteen long ones," said Valjean bitterly, and took a compensatory pull on the wine.

"And you're not at the _petite fatigue_ yet? You do know how to read, right?"

"Yes," said Valjean irritably, casting a sharp glance at his dining companion.

"Well," said Chenildieu, not noticing, "I don't know––I don't have a trade, Jean, and if––I mean––fourteen bloody years! They haven't taken you off hard labor after all this time, good God, Jean, when––I mean––what's going to happen to _me?_"

Valjean ruffled Chenildieu's hair as though he were a child. "Oh, you poor little thing. Don't worry, they'll take care of you." He sniggered.

Chenildieu flattened the stubble on his head and seized Valjean by the shoulders of his red cassock. "Don't––_manhandle_––me, Jean!" he shouted.

Valjean pretended to pout for a moment, then swatted Chenildieu's hands away easily. "Listen, J'ni'Dieu," he said. "You've got a lot to learn here. I am never going to be on the _p'tite fatigue_ or the_ demi-chaîne_ because I'm just too goddamn strong. It's the way it's always been and it's the way it always will be."

"But those sons of bitches have no right!" Chenildieu said vehemently. "It's been long enough, you should be able to work as a clerk or something! To hell with your escape record, they took you off the double chain, didn't they? Goddamn it, they can't _use_ you like that!" He turned aside and spat unrestrainedly on the floor of the mess hall.

Valjean watched impassively. The small fry was just worrying about himself. His carping would improve over time; Valjean just hoped he wouldn't take too long in the wisening up. They'd have to be together for at least three years, and he didn't wish to be shackled to a whiner for all that time, especially not one who would cramp his style. The frail and fiery fellow had not yet learned the balance between snivelling and pissing others off, and it was imperative that he do so within the compass of a month, or else he would officially be dead weight. Once they were uncoupled, Chenildieu's adjustment would be his own problem. He had his whole life to figure it out, after all.

Chenildieu's dark muttering and Valjean's interior monologue were interrupted when a young convict with a bestial mark in his face and bearing thunked onto the bench across from the two of them, along with his partner, a diminutive youth even younger than he. His cap was green. "Jean-the-Jack!" he said fraternally. "Good day to you!" His eyes then got down to business, fixing themselves on Valjean's trencher. "Are you going to eat that?"

"Yes, I am," said Valjean curtly. "Don't be stupid, Cochepaille!" he snapped a moment later, as the newcomer, who was solidly built but not nearly as big as Valjean, inched his hand towards the latter's soup dregs.

"But he _is _stupid," volunteered Cochepaille's "husband" Aubain, whose endearing looks––famous among all the lechers of the bagne––and good rapport with his chainfellow guaranteed him immunity for the remark.

Valjean quickly downed the last of the soup. "All gone," he said decisively.

Cochepaille sighed. "Can I have the rest of your wine, then?"

"Yeah, why not," said Valjean, and pushed the cup towards him.

Chenildieu watched the proceedings with mild amusement. "Why don't you just mooch off of people who need less food than you? _Smaller_ people?"

"He does," said Aubain, and pointed to himself.

Cochepaille gave such a hangdog look that Chenildieu laughed––a crowlike sound. "Here, you can have mine," he told Cochepaille, and offered him his broth, which he had no intention of drinking. Cochepaille's eyes widened in delight and he slapped Chenildieu on the back. The smaller lifer winced.

"Haven't they let you work overtime in the ropery yet?" asked Valjean. "Did you remember what I told you about buying extra rations?"

"Yeah, but it's no go," said the ex-shepherd sadly.

"Oh, really?" asked Valjean, a little piqued, not so much on Cochepaille's behalf as from general displeasure at the apparent fickleness of the guards' abitration. "Why?"

"They just won't let me. They said they don't need my work enough to sell me rations for it. It's not worth a pot of fèves."

"Maybe it's to do with the nature of your detail. If you could get transferred to––I don't know––the Arsenal, you might have better luck selling your labor," Valjean suggested.

Chenildieu wondered briefly if everyone's lives might be easier if he had been partnered to Aubain, and Valjean to Cochepaille. He had seen Cochepaille and his pet androgyne once before, but he hadn't gotten a good look at them, much less spoken to them; he had been downcast during that time, meeting few men's eyes. They had discussed him for a moment, as he was a novelty, but there had not been much to say, except that his name was Chenildieu and he was new. He had not joined in the conversation, and Valjean had not made him.

"How old are you, exactly?" he asked the epicene boy.

"Eighteen," replied the lad. "And, before you ask, I stole––that's why I'm here."

"Very well," said Chenildieu. "I can't say much to that, I was a thief myself when I was your age. When is your time up, kid?" he asked.

"Three years," said the boy.

"What are you going to do then?" asked Chenildieu casually, doing his best to conceal the hunger in his voice.

"Go straight, probably. I don't want to come back here for life. No offense," he added half-sincerely.

"Ah, well, that's easier said than done," Chenildieu said spitefully. "You might fall back into the habit." He had wished the boy well when he'd asked, truly, but the thought of the kid reclaiming his wealth of freedom in only three years was killing him.

The child shook his head and turned away occlusively, showing Chenildieu only a quarter of his cherubic face.

Chenildieu bit his lip. So much for his life being easier with Aubain. Well, it was really Cochepaille he needed to know, anyway––Cochepaille was really the only fixture among them. Aubain would leave soon, and Valjean, too, provided he didn't try running again. Chenildieu rested his head on his fists and surreptitiously studied Cochepaille's face. There was a kind of shuttered blankness in the countenance, as though the eyes were half-closed windows––cracked blinds opening into an unfurnished and rather dusty room. Chenildieu trained his own eyes on the boorish-looking man and smiled in what he hoped was not a come-hither way, but Cochepaille didn't notice.

Valjean had finished with his advice-giving and was now occupied in picking at the label on his hat, a little tin placard with the numbers of his matricule punched out. There were more sewn on at strategic places––his coat, his vest; there was no way for him to forget his number. As for the cap, it was a part of him now; he would have felt nude without it, and not just because of the bare state of his head, although that was part of it. It was ironic: the middle ground in terms of coif was for the fortunate. When he'd been a peasant, his hair had been long; he'd had neither the time nor the means to trim it properly. Now, in the bagne, he was hardly allowed to keep any of it. There had to be some sort of underlying societal law governing the length of one's hair. What was so special about moderately-groomed hair...? Before he could get much further with that train of thought, his attention was drawn to a disturbance in the room. There was a commotion at one of the far tables, prisoners grouped in twos around the spot where someone was standing and belting the last verse of "Ça Ira." Valjean immediately made himself smaller and less conspicuous in preparation for the imminent crackdown.

"What's with him?" Chenildieu asked, fascinated.

"That's Groussard," said Valjean didactically. "He was a Hébertist. They say he missed the guillotine by _this_ much."

"Yeah," chimed in the Buonapartist Villeneuve, a _demi-chaîne_ prisoner who also worked in the quarry. He had heretofore been eating silently, and it was impossible to tell how long he had been eavesdropping. "I heard the National Razor came so close to him he felt the breeze on his neck!"

"Oh, those were not good times," groaned Chenildieu. "Don't bring it back."

"Why, citizen?" asked Villeneuve.

Before Chenildieu could respond, their attention was captured by the spectacle of three or four _argousins_ descending on the singer.

"He's going to get the hole," Aubain observed.

"No, the lash," guessed Cochepaille.

"You can get whipped for singing?" asked Chenildieu, aghast. Aubain cast him a supercilious look; meanwhile, Villeneuve and Cochepaille were laying bets as to what sort of punishment the demented Republican would get.

"Mother of God," said Villeneuve. "I think they broke his nose."

"Look, they're giving it to Brevet too," said Aubain, referring to Groussard's partner. "He didn't even do anything!"

"Why did he_ do_ that?" Chenildieu asked no one in particular. Aubain just shook his head and tapped his temple. Chenildieu squinted in puzzlement and Villeneuve explained, "He's right, my friend; old man Groussard is just touched in the head."

"Has he done this sort of thing before?"

"Oh yes," replied Villeneuve. "Last month it was the Carmagnole."

"What the hell happened to him?"

"Nothing. A fight had broken out at the same time. The _soudards_ didn't even notice. I think they're overtaxed, poor fellows."

When Groussard had been subdued and hauled out along with his hapless companion, Chenildieu fixed his potent gaze on Villeneuve. "So, 'why'?" he reprised. "Why were those bad days for me? Because––"

"What days, again?"

"The Revolution!"

"Oh, right."

"Oh my God, forget it."

"No, no, tell me," Villeneuve said lightly.

"Well," said Chenildieu, with an almost imperceptible twitch of the jaw, "I was living hard by Lyon at the time. I got the hell out of dodge during the revolt of '93, you can be sure."

"I was at Nantes myself," reminisced Villeneuve. "I remember the drownings."

"As for me, I didn't know there was a revolution at the time," said Valjean drily.

Villeneuve scoffed and Valjean said, "Faverolles was a long way from Paris, _mon vieux_. Or Nantes."

"Yes, but surely you must have heard––"

"I'm sure the news reached the town, but it never reached me. Wait––well, when the Bastille fell, I did hear of that. And once or twice I might have overheard some news when I was a day laborer. I don't remember."

"Well, I do!" cried Villeneuve.

"Yeah, well, tell me about it! Did it make your life better, when they tied all those people up and put them on boats full of holes?"

"Carrier was a bit excessive, yes, but then I never was a Montagnard either––"

"You're a Buonapartist, I know, I know," Valjean said cynically.

"Well, what do you think about the Emperor?"

"What _about_ him?" interjected Chenildieu. "He's all right, I suppose. He has a steadier hand than those––whoever those mugs running the show were––did."

Villeneuve looked hotly at Valjean. "And you? You?"

"How should I know?" asked Valjean cagily. "I've been locked up for his entire political career. I've heard of his Code, but the bagne already had its own code, and that hasn't changed, has it?"

"Well, no, but––"

"So, what's the Emperor to you?"

"When I was _outside_ I could feel his differences! And when I get out, I will, too!" A megalomaniacal gleam came into his eyes. "He'll have conquered the whole of Europe by then!"

"And how did a politique such as yourself end up _aux durs__?_" asked Chenildieu. "May I inquire as to what monsieur did?"

Villeneuve glared at him. "My mistress and I got into a fight in her boudoir. I pushed her. She hit her head on the dresser. She died. Ten years."

"That must have been some dresser," Chenildieu commented wryly.

"It wasn't murder!" said Villeneuve hotly.

Before Chenildieu could think of a reply to this avowal, everyone started making preparations to quit the room. Supper was drawing to a close.

They all rose and stacked their tableware. As he joined the line of prisoners filing out of the hall, Villeneuve looked back over his shoulder. "I'm not a murderer––what's your name, anyway?"

"Je-nie-Dieu," said the man from the Loire.

Villeneuve saluted him, half-derisively, half-sincerely.

Before Valjean and Chenildieu passed into the aisle, a knot of convicts went before them, and after a few moments Villeneuve had been hustled out of sight.

"Funny guy," said Chenildieu, as they entered the main dormitory.

Valjean quirked an eyebrow and gave a fraction of a smile, but said nothing.

"Lights out," said the_ garde-chiourme_. And that was that.


	3. Coucher

_A/N: This is a mini-chapter; I promise, gentle readers, that the next one will be full-size. I don't think a vignette about Chenildieu and his insomnia ought to be a whole lot longer, in any case._

* * *

Chenildieu could not sleep.

There were two reasons for this.

The first was that it was hot. The room was as still and stifling as it had ever been, each cubic inch of air stuffed with a warm, clammy vapor. Whether it was atmospheric moisture or the collective sweat of the room Chenildieu could not tell. He removed his shirt and _casaque_, he pressed his bare torso against the wood of his plank bed, he held the chill metal of his chain against his perspiring forehead–– anything to cool himself off. The night felt as though it were holding its breath, and it was with a constricted chest and under an unbearable feeling of cocoonment that he dropped to the stone-flagged floor at the foot of the _banc_ and curled into a fetal position;––only to return to the bed, a few minutes later, with an arm and a leg hanging off the side.

The second reason was that his brand was hurting him again. The indelible letters, still raw, still red, were sending twinges throughout his whole shoulder and radiating a wash of referred pain down into his arm. He poked the inflamed skin in the interstices between, around, and inside the letters gingerly; it was warm to the touch. _My flesh is revolting_, he thought moodily. _But it won't work_. In trying to expunge the letters, his body would only put the finishing touch on their permanence, on their immutability; he would be marked not only by an external force, but also from within. His sentence would become biological in nature and would endure for as long as he were around: his body and his life were ruined. The mere existence of those letters on his flesh was hard to bear, but it was the P that was so poisonous. It was the difference between life and death; between forced labor, and forced labor for life.

In short, he was feeling sorry for himself with all the agony of his being.

He lay on his left side and swaddled the burn in his shirt. His right shoulder was a hotspot scorched with a glowing stamp, and his right ankle was confined and heavy; he remembered a time when his right had been his favored side––quicker reflexes, better coordination, a truer kick, a dominant hand. Now the right side was the ignominous side of his body. The dexter had become the sinister.

In the village outside of Blois where he had grown up, there had once been an old man, named Lechoux, who had had something happen to him––he had fallen down one day and it was a long time before he could get back up again. When he had recovered well enough to walk, it was soon discovered that he would always have to be accompanied when crossing streets, for he no longer saw anything on his left side. The left part of his face was gone, and so was his left hand; if his son spoke to him from the left portion of his field of vision, Lechoux would not perceive him; he even ignored the food on the left side of his plate, complaining, in his dotage, of hunger, until his daughter turned the plate one hundred and eighty degrees and brought the other half of his meal into his line of sight. As a child, Chenildieu had reveled in his two-sidedness, taken joy in his wholeness, been pleased that he, at least, was still bilateral.

Now, he wished that he, too, could be cut in half; that he could no longer feel, and no longer see, the side of his body that was loaded with opprobrium and abuse. He placed his cheek against the bare board and closed his eyes against the smarting of his shoulder. It was at that moment that he felt his cup of distress run over. Something wet brimmed behind his eyelids. Whatever it was, it collected in droplets of ineffable sadness, breached his interlocked lashes, and spilled out over the edge of a single blink.


	4. Dimanche

_A/N: Those of you who have read "The Bagnard and the Bohemian" may have gotten a sense of déjà vu already because of all the rain/cloud imagery. Sorry about that. I just like writing about rain showers and thunderstorms. It's my favorite cliché._

* * *

With the following morning dawned Chenildieu's first Sunday in Toulon. He rose with the others at five o'clock. Going down the stairs, he held his leg out to the _rondier _as usual, and, again as usual, the force of the hammer rapping on his irons made him jump.

"What the devil were you _doing_ last night, _loffard__?_" asked Fichou, calling Chenildieu the name reserved for those who bemoaned their fate the most. The _lof_ was the side of a ship that faced the wind, and it made a wailing noise. The bagnards took much of their green language from their free comrades in the port. Maël Fichou the Breton was ranged a few paces back from Chenildieu in the queue, replicating his placement to the _bonnet vert_ in the _salle_.

"What was I––" Chenildieu echoed apprehensively.

"Yeah, did you _fall off_ the bed, or what?"

"Oh," said Chenildieu, relieved. So that was what he was talking about. Still half-asleep, he'd fancied that it might have been the swirling, half-formed thoughts that had clamored noisily in his skull all night that had kept Maël awake. That, or his silent tears. But he was talking about physical movement. _Of course he is, you half-wit_, Chenildieu thought to himself.

"Yeah, 'oh,'" hammered on the Breton. "I was asleep, you idiot."

Chenildieu gathered that he was talking about the communal chain. Maël Fichou was a notoriously light sleeper; Chenildieu's nocturnal agitations would have woken him up. "I'm sorry, Chouchou," said Chenildieu, aware of how dangerous this constant nicknaming and use of the diminutive was but unable to rid himself of the habit. "I was..." he searched for something better-sounding than "I was hot." "I...I have fits."

"You _what__?_" huffed Fichou. His look of puzzlement passed as what he had been called registered. "And don't call me that!" he squawked, his voice too comically high-pitched to sound dangerous.

A cudgel struck the two conversants successively. "Forward, you swine!" cried its wielder. The two battered men stumbled ahead.

"A body could get sick of that," said Chenildieu in bleak deadpan.

Maël clasped his hands and cast his eyes heavenward, praying aloud for patience.

Chenildieu looked at him and released a corvine laugh. He felt better. A brisk wind was blowing into the hallway from the grated windows, and when they entered the courtyard he squinted at the young sky. Its ashen white was washed with a heavy, ominous gray, the pearly brilliance of a bright overcast day dimmed to a gloomy and electric shadow; a shadow which played host to a bank of dark and bluish leaden clouds that hovered, solidly buoyant, like aerostats. The sunrise was but an eerie blue glow.

He and the others massed into the courtyard, chattering and hooting. They were conducted from there to the main court of the bagne, where they were provided with an extra-small ration of black bread. Chenildieu looked around for Valjean as the squads of prisoners who slept in the hulks arrived. He saw Villeneuve come through the gate and approached him. "Have you seen Jean?"

"Jean is with the rest of the learning-party, on their way to the Ignorantines," said Villeneuve.

"What for?" asked Chenildieu. He wondered if he ought to go to school, too.

"Reading, writing, arithmetic––you know, the sort of thing you and I learned in primary school."

There was a tinge of snobbery in Villeneuve's voice, which piqued Chenildieu's curiosity as much as it rankled him. "So monsieur had the benefit of an excellent education?" he baited.

Villeneuve scowled. "Yes, as a matter of fact, he did," he said, and clamped his lips together.

Chenildieu smiled and disappeared into the milling crowd, looking over his shoulder to see Villeneuve give a haughty toss of the head. No, there was nothing for him at the school. He sat down upon a bench and gnawed on his bread, watching his fellow-prisoners, the garish colors of whose scarlet jackets and habits of yellow drab looked strange in the purplish-gray light. As another gust swirled through the court, he reached to turn up his collar, as had been his wont in civilian clothes; but his fingers came up empty on the flat hem of his neckline. He'd forgotten. The convict jacket had no collar; no buttons, either.

The sun was now well above the horizon, cached behind the bruise-colored edifice of storm. He watched as the last stragglers were driven into the large outer court, the grates locking behind them. A small company of _gardes-chiourme _circled the prisoners, their truncheons always at the ready.

"All right!" bawled one of the guards. "Whichever of you lot wants to go to the friars' school, get over by the gate, now!"

It appeared that the would-be students had already been gathered from the hulks; now the scores of men who slept on shore were being canvassed. Chenildieu contemplated whether or not to go; he had been decently taught as a schoolboy, but there might be another reason to present himself there. He turned to the nearest convict who looked unlikely to ill-use him, a young man standing near his bench. "Excuse me, comrade, do you know when classes start?"

"Faith, friend, if you want to go, you'd best head out right now." The man nodded at the gate. "They're almost all outside, now."

Chenildieu stubbornly stayed put. "But what exactly does_ going_ involve?"

"I don't know, friend, I've never been. Stay––I know a few who have; they gather outside the cloister for matins; there's a service that follows that; then they study; then there's some more prayer goes on in the room what's where they teach."

Je-nie-Dieu's nickname might not have been his own idea, but it was nonetheless descriptive and apt; he was a thoroughly irreverent man. "That's quite a lot of church," he said.

"What can I tell you, friend?" said the other prisoner. "It's on account of church they do what they do in the first place, teaching us and all."

"Yes, and that's just the thing of it," said Chenildieu, suddenly sparking philosophical. "Isn't there a goddamned human being out there who'd be willing to teach a _galley-slave_––" he spat the word out–– "with it being, for once, just for _us_?"

"I don't know," said the man who called him a friend. "Ask Maline, his memory goes back a hundred-odd years."

"Who?"

"You haven't met Maline? How can you not have met _la petite Maligne__?_"

"I'm new he––" Chenildieu began, then stopped himself.

But his interlocutor was already elsewhere mentally. Transported, neither his eyes nor his attention were focused upon Chenildieu, even though it was ostensibly on his behalf that he was so engaged. He stopped in concentration, searched over the heads of the crowd, and latched his eyes onto someone at the far end of the court. "Maline!" he clamored. "Oh, Maline! This fellow wants to ask you something!"

Chenildieu folded his arms and slumped over, his elbows jammed into the flesh above his knees. He waited. While his eyes were still focused on his ironshod shoes, he heard someone say:

"Maline, fourth-generation galley-slave, at your service!"

The speaker's razed hair was a shade halfway in between blond and red, and his eyes were the most orange hue of brown Chenildieu had ever seen.

"What?" Chenildieu asked, nonplussed; he looked questioningly at the man who had called the ancestral captive forth and raised his eyebrows. The latter just grinned, so he turned back to Maline. "Fourth––fourth-generation?"

"Yes, my good sir," affirmed Maline, bowing deeply.

"_Fourth__?_"

Maline curtsied with his coat, and it was grotesque. "Back to my great-grandfather, patrilineally. That's the word for it. You could say it has become the family trade." He smiled feyly, and continued. "When my great-grandfather got this whole thing rolling, it was in 1690 something or other. The galleys were lousy with Huguenots. Sanctimonious buggers, they were. As for him, he was an assassin; he'd fathered a kid thirteen years before, and saw him from time to time. But he got life; once he was sent away, he never saw his kid again. When the boy came of age, he was packed off to pull an oar in his turn, but not before having his own pile of kids. My dad doesn't remember him––he was condemned when he was quite small. My grandmother had been his confidante, and it was through her that my dad learned all the stories about Louis XIV's galleys, stories that my grandfather told her, stories that he in turn had learned from letters and old friends of his dad's. I don't know if my father's still alive, but the last time I saw him he was free. I was ten when he was arrested, and he came back a few days after I turned nineteen. As for me, I plied the same habits as him, and I fully expected to end up where I am now." His cognac eyes flickered, the irises bright beneath the glass of his corneas. "Thus, as you can see, I am the latest to take up the mantle of a proud tradition." He unhooked his chain from his belt and began to wind and unwind it around his hand.

Chenildieu looked enviously at the man's scarlet cap. "Are you planning on being a _cheval de retour__?_"

Maline smiled at him impishly. "We'll see what happens," he said.

"Oi, Thierry Maline!" someone cried.

Maline whirled around, looking for the voice. "I am wanted," he said. His eye flashed and his hand went up. "I must go; I'll be back shortly." He vanished.

"He won't be back," said the convict who had called him over. "He gets called away, that's it. Hey, you didn't get to ask him your question!"

"What question?" said Chenildieu.

"I don't remember," said the other man, suddenly perplexed. "Ah, well, so it goes. Can't help having the attention span of a chicken. Say, what're you called?"

"Je-nie-Dieu," said the same.

"_Parbleu_, no wonder you didn't go to the friars' school, " exclaimed the other. "Highly interesting. And me, my name's Lesurques––no relation to the poor sap who got clipped in '97. They call me _l'Innocent_ sometimes, though, on account of him." He winked.

Chenildieu knew who he was referring to––the innocent man who went to the scaffold in the place of the Lyon Mail killer––a fellow named Dubois or something, who looked just like him––and wore all white at his execution, the sucker, as though that meant something. Well, he was still officially guilty––his property was still confiscated and all––but to Chenildieu it had seemed pretty obvious that they'd gotten the wrong man. And that brigand Courriol who'd died with him––confessing his guilt, and denying that of Lesurques? What madness! Was he hoping that some of Lesurques' martyrdom would rub off on him?

Lesurques––the one who was neither dead nor virtuous––grinned. "So now you've met Maline."

Chenildieu made a face and Lesurques roared with mirth. "He's an acquired taste, Maline––_la petite Maligne_, we call him––did I tell you that?––but he grows on you. He's got some weird stories about the galleys under Louis le Grand––the _galley_-galleys, I mean. This place is Versailles compared to those, mate, I tell you what."

"I don't doubt it," said Chenildieu flatly. "Funny how old Louis XIV is the source of both extremes––Versailles, and the galleys."

"Yeah, too true! Say, in five years it'll be the centennial of his death. I feel like we ought to do something. A celebration! We'll both be here; my term's not up for seven more years, and you look like you'll be sticking around. Maybe we can arrange to have one of those picnics."

"Picnics?" asked Chenildieu, his head spinning as he tried to process the thought of five years into the future.

"Yeah, good-behavior work crews get to go off and have a time. I've never done it, but I've heard it's nice."

Chenildieu put his hand to the bridge of his nose and sighed quietly. "Does it involve better food?"

"Not really; but booze! Lots and lots of _pinard_. And they don't hit you, unless you get out of control."

Chenildieu was already covered with bruises, so he pricked his ears at this last. Artlessly, he raised his elbow and ran his hand over it, seeing if yesterday's blow from the club had left a mark; it was fine. There was only a slight contusion, a faint discoloration. Lesurques furrowed his brow but said nothing.

Meanwhile, the sky continued to grow darker even as the sun rose higher. The gate was suddenly unlocked, and the _argousins_ started forming the convicts into lines.

"What are we doing now?" asked Chenildieu, bewildered.

"Going out," answered Lesurques. "I expect they want to bring us outside before it rains. Workdays it doesn't matter, of course; but _they _don't want to get wet if they can possibly help it."

They were escorted out, uncoupled but kept in line by a great number of guards and by their fear of the baton. Once they had started out on the road, Chenildieu received some idea of where they were being led. It was in the direction of the sea, but along a path that overshot the port.

The hour being early, only the bakeries were open. Here and there a laborer stopped and peered for a moment in mild curiosity at the passing convicts before going back to work again. The herd of prisoners emerged into a path that opened onto some rocky bluffs, not far from the particular quarry where Chenildieu worked, which overlooked the sea. The Mediterranean was gray, its opaque waters crashing into clear, heavy waves on the rocky beach below.

It was on the field of the bluffs that they were made to take their air. A few men immediately sat down and set about sketching serenely with materials they'd stuffed into their coats; others spread out their crafts and began making curios out of––what? shells? straw? wood?––with an industrious air that suggested money was involved. Chenildieu, for his part, wandered away from the rest––while being careful to stay within the bournes the _gardes-chiourme_ had set––and sat alone in meditation. Red-clad figures clambered over the rocks and went in circles, and Chenildieu watched them from afar until foreground and horizon blurred together.

He did not know how long he had been sitting thus, when he was approached, with a looming suddenness incurred by his dwindled field of vision, by a convict with a green cap and a ball and chain.

The galley-slave looked as though he hadn't noticed Chenildieu either, and appeared to startle when he did. They had both roamed to the outskirts of the crowd to think. The man recovered quickly and gave Chenildieu a look of economical amicability––not quite a smile, but a kind regard nonetheless.

"I'm Léon Lévy," he said, and extended his hand, which was calloused and supple.

Chenildieu shook, trying not to look at the beastly looking weight attached to the man's chain.

"What's your name again, brother?"

"Chenildieu, Je-nie-Dieu," said Chenildieu.

Lévy laughed happily and beamed a radiant smile at his interlocutor. "I was raised to believe in Hashem, but we could never really talk to one another, me and Him. I think the process of losing one's religion is quite the same no matter what your creed. Excellent sobriquet! And I, they call me Lévy l'Hébreu. They call me other things, too, which I don't care to say, that you'll hear soon enough." He shrugged it off, but a glint of hurt stayed in his eyes. "Where are you from, traveler?"

"Lyon," Chenildieu lied nominally. "And you?"

"Here, I suppose," said Lévy. "Marseille, next door to this dear town that we all know and love. _The city where the mistral blows, la la la_..." he sang spontaneously, to a tune of his own making. "But all over, really. I was a ragman."

"A ragman? Me and my crew stole a _chiffonnier's_ basket once. There was fuck-all in it," said Chenildieu unreflectively. There followed an awkward moment where Chenildieu and Lévy sized one another up, half in jest. Chenildieu was puny, but Lévy was severely hampered.

Lévy gave Chenildieu a look of joking reproach and thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, whose rips were all diligently patched from what were probably fabric scraps from the tailors' atelier.

"So, what are you in for?" Chenildieu inquired perfunctorily.

"Stealing a pewter spoon. It wasn't my best moment, that I will freely admit."

"A first crime?––but you're a greencap!" Chenildieu exclaimed.

Lévy ran both of his hands through the remnants of an aureole of loosely curled hair, mostly dusky brown but touched with a little premature gray at the temples. His face was lined in the way peculiar to those who are still young, with small prints around the eyes and nose, a fissure between the eyebrows, a little sharpness of cheekbone.

"Yes, he said finally. "Yes, that is what I was given."

"But I thought theft like that was five years, isn't it?"

"It depends," said Lévy.

"It's cause he's a _guinal__!_" yelled a convict who had been listening in. It was Jean-Christophe the Scarecrow, who had killed his brother in a jealous rage. "Don't you get it? A _youtre_, a _frisé!_ That's why he got sentenced _à vioque__!_" He laughed sordidly. "Do you get it now, little man?"

"Yes, I get it," Chenildieu said gruffly.

"Go away, Christophe," said Lévy wearily. He started to take an aggressive step towards the fratricide, but the effort with the ball and chain was apparently too great, for he stopped, turned back as though nothing had happened, and set about wiping his forehead with the doffed hat whose colour was so telling. He sighed quietly and looked down at his _boulet_. "This bloody thing is like a cannonball," he said, bending down and hefting it in his hands with difficulty. "No, scratch that; I think it _is_ a cannonball."

"Why did they do that?"

"For being a filthy Je-e-e-ew!" yelled L'Épouvantail again.

Lévy shot the deranged convict a rapid _bras d'honneur_ and limped laboriously towards him, seemingly having decided that the undertaking was worth it; he grasped his chain in his hand and dragged his punitive burden along behind him.

"Leave Jean-Christophe alone, you rat!" Christophe's associate Fauché cried to the advancing man before diverting the attention of his friend. "Look, Jean, I got some tobacco for both of us..." Christophe's eyes lit up, and the two went their way.

The beleaguered Marseillais hobbled a few paces back to Chenildieu, who had been watching the conflict without investment. Lévy sank upon his heels for a moment, panting. "It's...because..." he held up a roughened hand. "My _compagnon de chaîne_, Grégoire, was very ill. He'd been weeks like that, and it had just been getting worse and worse...he's in the infirmary, now, with typhoid fever and cracked ribs. So last week, he collapses in the middle of morning work and this screw just starts whaling on him. I haven't a clue what was wrong with the villain––just having a bad day, I guess. Maybe his mistress left him. Anyway: I didn't touch the guard, of course, but I tried to shield Grégoire a little––you know, cover his head, protect his kidneys, try and keep his backbone from getting damaged, that sort of thing. I'm crouching by him after he collapses, and then this son of a bitch comes by, and I see him going for his stick, and I just _dive_ on top of Greg." He flung himself onto his hands and knees in illustration, then sat back and dusted himself off. "While the sick fuck's trying to prise me off I'm clinging to Greg, but I'm not resisting the guard, right, because I don't want to retire to the Abbaye de Mont-à-Regret just yet, you know? Someday I may, but for now I still like having eyes that can see, and ears that can hear, and a body that can feel the world...so, I keep my hands off of him. Well, the bastard finally realizes that Greg is really sick, which is what I've been yelling at him the entire time, so he stops and sends someone to the _chaloupier_ for the proper tools to break the _organeaux_ so they can cart him off to the hospital. Meanwhile I get five days in the double chain and now this––the wages of interference. It's a drag, but it's all right, it doesn't hurt; like in the song, you know?"

"Yes," said Chenildieu, making a mental note never to interfere with another forçat's punishment. If this rangy, robust-looking Jew was having trouble managing his _boulet au pied_, Chenildieu knew that he in his feebleness would be quite immobilized. Jean could fend for himself, anyway, and it's not like he would ever do the same for him. "My partner once spent two years in the double chain," Chenildieu offered.

"I believe it," said Lévy melancholically. "There's something about it that's even worse than the bastonnade, and the Management knows it. The tarred rope hurts like hell, sure, and it's not that it goes by quickly, either, but it's contained––it's like a clean-burning flame, _fwoom_, the ordeal just _is_ and then all you have to deal with are the wounds, which lay you up for a while in the infirmary. But the double chain...your mind does funny things in that sweltering cell, and your very body starts to go crazy from lack of movement...and it continues even after they set you free––well, free-er, I mean. It oozes into everything like black molasses, filling the cells of your mental space with sticky." He looked into the middle distance for a moment. "If they had let me keep my notebook, it might not have been so bad."

"You write?"

"After a fashion. And doodle. It's my habit. I was able to procure one from Grégoire in the beginning. An article like that is hard to come by––you know how the Management feels about us writing _without permission_! But Grégoire thought nothing of it, just told me he'd get me one at his next lesson at the friars' school. Sure enough, he brings me a notebook and an oil pencil. I hoped he'd asked for them, but no, he stole them. Now why would he take a risk like that? For the thrill." Lévy laughed wistfully. "That crazy rogue. He was my go-to for nigh everything. There was the episode with the file––I couldn't get any of the standard _ferlampiers_ to lend me one, they were all convinced I would betray them––I ask him for help, and presto!"

"He wasn't angry that you were going to leave him behind?"

"Oh goodness no, he knew all about it from the beginning, gave the whole plan his blessing. He'd miss me, he said, but he understood. He warned me that it wasn't going to work, though. 'They'll catch it,' he said. He was right, too; I should have listened to him, he always was a brick."

"What happened?" asked Chenildieu, guessing the answer.

"The roundsman. I knew I wouldn't be able to get all the way through in one night, the file just wasn't that good, and besides, the sleeping-hall is probably one of the worst spots to run from, anyway––so I took a good stab at the chain in hopes of finishing the job at a more propitious point in time. It was a stupid idea, but I just wanted _out_, you know?"

"I think I see where this is going."

"I don't doubt it," said Lévy, with an embarrassed smile. "During morning checks, 'Your leg!' I hold it out, and down comes the hammer, and––well, it sounded the same to me, but he could tell at once. Pulls me out of the line, has some _gardes-chiourme_ grab ahold of me, takes a good look at my chain, and...well, you know the rest."

"Bastonnade?"

"Indeed. At least Grégoire was never implicated; I gave the file back to him before dawn and he managed to have it passed all the way back up to whoever it first came from."

There was a tired pause as Lévy tried to form a sling out of his coat in which to carry his ball, so he would not have to drag his leg; the moment it left the ground, however, he realized that his coat would be ripped, and so gave up. He self-pacifyingly clutched the collar of his shirt and bowed his head; but a moment later he looked up again and smiled faintly.

"How long have you been here?" Chenildieu asked matter-of-factly, turning the narrative into an interrogation.

"Not over-long, I entered in 1804."

"Six years!"

"More or less," said Lévy cavalierly. "And you, are you new?"

"Yes," said Chenildieu guardedly. "How can you tell?"

"I just can," said Lévy, with a sly smile. "Well," he conceded, "I work as a clerk at the outer gate sometimes, and when you told me your name I thought I remembered seeing it on a matriculation list not long ago. But I would have known anyway."

"How?"

"You are not so sunburned, your coat is not so filthy, and the hitch in your step is not yet second nature."

"Well, that will be fixed," said Chenildieu grimly, suddenly having a crystal-clear vision of what his future self would look like.

"True," said Lévy. "Come, it's going to rain––they will be massing us inside for an early lunch."

It was true; Chenildieu began to apprehend the yells of guards and the directional movement of prisoners.

"We'll get to eat in the canteen, instead of from the tub," Lévy told Chenildieu. "We don't have to wait until noon. Sunday déjeuner is like that. I eat better in Toulon than I did before, I'll grant you that."

"I can't really say the same for myself," said Chenildieu stubbornly. "We could usually always manage to lift some food from a bakery or a _bouchon_. Bread thieves get themselves caught left and right, and I don't understand it. Those places are easy to break into if you plan it right." Then he admitted, as he had to Valjean, "It wasn't much thanks to me, though. All the finesse definitely came from these two or three fellows that were the brains of the operation. I was good at casing joints, finding places to hide things, taking care of problems––but the stealth and subterfuge, that was all them."

They had now rejoined the pack, Chenildieu unconsciously slowing his usually nervous gait in order to accomodate Lévy's struggles to keep up with the crowd and abreast of the rear guards. When Lévy slackened his pace for a moment, an _argousin_ strode up from behind to meet him. "No straggling!" was his merciless reprimand.

Lévy turned a burning hazel eye on his taskmaster. "I'm doing the best I can," he said simply.

A club flew down and a blow landed on the fleshy part of Lévy's upper arm. Chenildieu kept his vow and did not intercede. It was only when the guard had retreated and Lévy had redoubled his efforts to walk that Chenildieu himself bent down, grasped Lévy's chain, and did his best to hoist the weight off the ground.

Lévy started and looked in disbelief at the bilious little man who was supporting his ball and chain. Tears came to his eyes. "Thank you," he said. He leaned down for a moment and tried to help the weaker man, re-clutching the links he had earlier dropped because he was tired of hunching.

A column of gray silk was waving in the distance, flying the vertical length from the clouds to the ground; rain had begun to fall far in the east. A sparse shower began to patter down.

When they both felt a few drops landing on their cheeks, Lévy turned to Chenildieu and said jocosely, "Did you know that Toulon is the sunniest city in France?" They looked up at the leaden sky veined with cracks and fissures of water-heavy darkness. The shower was cold, but the zenith light that insolated the port town's docks and quarries was nonetheless the severer force.

When exposed on Toulon's shelterless plain of forced labor, the only thing worse than the rain was the pitiless sun.


	5. Midi

_A/N: Aaaaaand they're _still_ not at Mass! Holy SHIT. That year-long wait was ridiculous. Sorry, guys. Is anyone still reading this? I apologize for the long conversations that go nowhere, and the large talking to action ratio. I'm sort of erring on the side of super-realism. More action will come, and more characters. Thanks to Trompe-la-mort for the "drunken slurring" idea of the genesis of Chenildieu's nickname._

* * *

Before the _chiourme_ had neared the outer fortress of the bagne, it was pouring. Torrents of water were unleashed by the unmindful sky and soon everyone was drenched, _forçat, garde-chiourme,_ and civilian _ouvrier_ alike.

The man who was rangy and dark-haired tilted his face up into the deluge and laughed gleefully. He raised his free hand palm-up and caught a cupful of rain, then, after pouring it out, grasped the lapel of his sopping coat and squeezed out a stream of water. "It's laundry day!" Lévy declared. "Enjoy it, brother––it's a bath and a washing of clothes all at once! Get your _infamous costume _clean while you can!"

Chenildieu let go of Lévy's chain for a moment to remove his cap and wring it out. His teeth chattered. "Sp-speak f-f-for y-yourself," he said, shivering violently.

"Keep going, keep going, it's just a bit of rain!" yelled a guard as more prisoners paused to tend to their clothes, holding up his baton to encourage his charges.

Lévy pulled his ball out of the mud and continued. Chenildieu replaced his _bonnet _on his head, continuing to tremble with cold as the rain soaked through his uniform to his skin, and grudgingly resumed assisting Lévy.

Despite their best efforts, they were soon overtaken by a low-ranking guard, who started to pass them, then stopped short. "The hell is this?" he demanded.

Both prisoners halted and looked up timorously. Lévy spoke first. "What is it, sir?" A look of nervous dejection came over his face, which suggested that he knew what the trouble was. He looked fleetingly at Chenildieu, who was still stubbornly gripping the chain and peering at the guard in an attitude of mingled insolence and nonchalance.

"That––that nonsense! You!" The guard looked at Chenildieu's label. "You, 38576! What do you think you're doing?"

"Sir?" asked Chenildieu dispassionately.

"What do you think you're playing at, carrying his thing, there?"

Chenildieu squinted defiantly but said nothing.

"Drop it at once! That's his punishment. He has to carry it all by himself. A _galérien_ carrying another's _boulet!_ Good gracious!"

Chenildieu was on the point of obeying when he glanced at Lévy's face and saw, from the despair in his eyes, that he was close to tears. Lévy had turned his face away, trying to hide how he felt, but Chenildieu could still see his sudden rush of desolation; it was written in the way Lévy had clamped his lips together in rigid determination to keep them from quivering, in the way his chest heaved sharply for an instant, a sob locked tightly in the soundproofed case of his breast, in the way his fingers tightened around his chain. At that moment Chenildieu found Lévy's expression to be more frightening than what he knew the guard would do to him; in spite of his better judgement and his freshly made pledge, he refused with a quick shake of the head.

The guard then delivered the wonted baton blow, and the blunt force of the club's end was absorbed by Chenildieu's right shoulder.

Chenildieu released his grip on Lévy's chain involuntarily and crumpled to the ground, half-blind with pain. He shrieked and clamped one hand to his shoulder, clawing at nothing with his right. The guard looked disdainfully at him as he curled into a ball, struck him once more on the knee, and walked on, satisfied that his will would be heeded.

Lévy dropped to his knees, alarmed. "Je-nie-Dieu! Are you all right?" He ran his hands over Chenildieu's upper body, feeling for anything broken, as Chenildieu dry-heaved.

"Yes," Chenildieu said weakly, swatting Lévy's hand away. "Yes, I'm––I'm––I'm fine. It's just my shoulder, my right goddamn shoulder...my..._fuck_..." He got to his feet, and Lévy supported him for a moment; they both took up the march again, Lévy assiduously dragging his ball all the while––this time by himself.

"What's wrong with your right shoulder?" asked Lévy solicitously.

"My letters are there," said Chenildieu, in a voice carefully devoid of emotion.

"You're branded? That's right, I saw one a few months ago...when did they bring that back?"

"This year," said Chenildieu. "Just this year. Just my luck, eh? Oh," he muttered, "Why did that bastard have to hit me right _there_...? Did he do it on purpose?"

"Let's have a look at it," said Lévy, concerned.

"What are you, a doctor?" said Chenildieu sourly. But he shrugged his arm out of his coat and rolled up his sleeve.

Upon seeing the wound Lévy did not flinch, but a muscle in his cheek twitched. "I have a friend," he said, "Who works in the infirmary. What you need is a bandage and some salve. You'll be all right." He let go of his chain with one hand and patted him affectionately on the elbow of the non-stigmatized arm. "I'll see if I can get those things from him. How much does it hurt?"

"Right now?" Chenildieu qualified. "A lot. A whole hell of a lot." He carefully folded his sleeve back down, trying not to rub against the damaged flesh.

"But chronically?" Lévy pursued.

Chenildieu shrugged. "That depends. Some days are worse than others. Even the ones where some son of a whore doesn't bash on it with a club can be bad."

Lévy winced sympathetically, then grimaced for himself alone as his encumbrance got stuck in the mire again.

Mechanically, Chenildieu bent down yet again to help pry it out––not intending to carry it, of course, but willing to lend his left hand––but Lévy held out a blocking arm. "I don't want you to get hit in the shoulder again," he told him.

Chenildieu didn't want that, either; he obeyed, not without with relief, as Lévy's face now showed no traces of the torment that had earlier wrenched Chenildieu's gut so insistently. If Lévy had been broken for a moment at having the hand of another, extended in aid, forcibly removed from him, he had mastered himself now.

"I really don't like the way that looks," Lévy fretted. "It's not healing well. It could ulcerate in the state it's in."

"Thank you, Doctor," Chenildieu said tartly. Lévy ignored him. Chenildieu was in the process of glaring at his new companion when they reached the outer gate of the prison.

"Inside, inside!" bawled the same guard who had opened up the blossom of fire on Chenildieu's shoulder. Chenildieu glowered at the man, filled with a sudden desire to spit on the ground at his feet, or, better yet, in his red and bibulous face. A lot of the _sous-argousins_ seemed to be drunks––not just in their affect and the ravages it took on their features, but in their behavior as well. Then again, brutality was a prerequisite for the job, which was treated as being on par with animal husbandry, except the most dangerous and intelligent of creatures was involved. You didn't have to worry about goats and cows _thinking_. In any case, Chenildieu wasn't sure if drunken cruelty was necessarily worse than stone-sober sociopathy. They both had their downsides. The only way to quantify severity Chenildieu knew, anyway, was to measure the intensity and number of episodes of physical pain he experienced at the hands of any given man, and at the end of the day that was all that mattered. Privation––of food, of liberty, of carnal satisfaction––was bad, but unwanted additions, needless contact between bone and stick and flesh and boot, were a cosmic cruelty that he frankly wasn't sure he would be able to bear.

A small sigh of relief escaped from Lévy's heart as he dragged his monstrous, perpetual millstone the last few yards into the court with failing limbs. Once he and Chenildieu had rejoined the larger part of the crowd, he heaved himself onto a bench and tried to ease his labored breathing. The rain continued to fall in torrents, but Lévy seemed too sapped even to go shelter himself in one of the doorways or alcoves pocking the wall before they filled. He rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, tilted forward in a posture of intense brooding. Chenildieu sat beside him, hugging himself in an effort to chase away the deep chill that had seeped under his skin. He watched as the yard filled with the last of the morning's recreation party, and spared no time getting to his feet when the guards began to conduct them inside. Lévy rose with difficulty and followed at a slower pace.

It was as they were queuing up in front of the canteen to receive their rations that the students returned from the friars' school. The party was not large, and it was not long before Chenildieu glimpsed Valjean among their numbers. He was there, neither at the head of the group nor at its very rear, gazing at a point slightly above the heads of the others. Chenildieu would have raised a hand to greet him, but the look on Valjean's face sent a chill down his spine; he let his arm drop, totally unnerved, and looked uneasily at Lévy, who was trying again to form a sling for his ball and chain out of his casaque. Chenildieu watched with pity as Lévy gave up and kicked it in frustration with the iron-bound sole of his boot, wondering just how many times this spectacle had repeated itself since Lévy had been trammelled with that thing. He directed his gaze back towards his returning partner and felt his own regard scorched by the mental heat that radiated from Valjean's brazier of a face. Jean looked ferocious, his expression nothing short of a sordid bed of live coals. A quietly deranged smile was playing just beneath the ardent solemnity of Valjean's forceful poker-face. What frightened Chenildieu so was the fact that he had no idea _why _Valjean looked thus. He shuddered and clenched his fists nervously.

Meanwhile, the group of students was weaving back into the general crowd; Valjean was hailed by a number of convicts upon his return.

"Hey, Jean!"

"Morning, Jean-le-cric!"

"Morning, Jean!"

"Good day, Jean!" cried a man near Chenildieu. He saluted Valjean, doffing his cap.

Valjean took this respect with a stony face; he acknowledged each of the greetings with a nod, but he did not smile.

Lévy watched Chenildieu watch Valjean. "Oh, so your partner is Jean-the-Jack?" he said astutely. "I didn't realize..."

"Yes," said Chenildieu, flicking his eyes back to Lévy. "What do you know about him?" The more he knew about his mercurial chainmate, Chenildiu thought, the better.

"Just the usual," said Lévy vaguely. "I don't know him personally. We've exchanged words, but never really _spoken._ D'you know what I mean?"

The door to the canteen opened and the file moved forward.

"What's the 'usual'?" Chenildieu pursued, as they moved up to the front of the line.

"Well, he's strong," said Lévy.

"Hell, I knew _that_," said Chenildieu.

"And he's..._done_ things," Lévy continued.

"'Things'?"

"Feats. Nothing I've ever seen, mind," Lévy disclaimed, and received his _gamelle_ with eager hands. Chenildieu followed suit, gazing at the soggy beans the _fricotier_ had just ladled into his bowl with a revulsion that his hunger was not quite great enough to eclipse.

"Oh, and he's simply _renowned_. For instance," said Lévy, "I've heard that the overseers used to fight over him when forming squads. Once, even, the man in charge of the arsenal was behind on production, and he got into a loud quarrel with the captain of some ship or other––The Contretemps, I think it was called? Funny name, rather apt––who, of course, wanted to claim him for his ship that day. They say that they almost came to blows, and ever since then it has been forbidden to even contest the Jean-the-Jack's detail once it has been assigned, and what's more, it's passed down by an impartial party. But, of course," he added, shrugging his shoulders, "That could just be a myth."

"I don't know yet; we've been in the quarry all week. He hasn't been assigned anything new since before I came. Oh! This is disagreeable," said Chenildieu querulously. "I don't want a partner who has myths. And one who can't escape the _grande fatigue_, at that."

"I think you're stuck, comrade," said Lévy affably.

"Yes, I _know_," gruffed Chenildieu. "At least three years, that's what it is, isn't it?

"On average, yes," Lévy replied.

They seated themselves at a table where there were already three or four convicts.

"Rotten," said Chenildieu unhappily, "This is perfectly rotten, I swear."

"What's rotten?" asked Pierrot, condemned like Chenildieu to life for murder without premeditation.

"Nothing. Lousy christ, why are you all such busybodies?" Chenildieu groused.

Lévy elbowed him in the ribs. "Try and curb those antisocial impulses, will you? You're not a veteran, you know," he carped in his ear.

Before Chenildieu could hiss something ill-tempered in response, he was distracted by the addition of two new diners to the bench, one of whom was Villeneuve.

"Oh God in hell, not you again," Chenildieu groaned.

This time Lévy neglected to chide him; he merely gave a small smile instead.

Villeneuve, for his part, gave a look of supreme contempt that took over his entire body, although it was headquartered in his face, which was crowned with the most perfect sneer Chenildieu had ever seen. His shoulders stiffened, his spine took on a curve of disdain, and his hands unfolded delicately onto the tabletop. "Good afternoon to you too––what was your name again? Je-suis-gueux or something like that?"

"Go to hell," Chenildieu said crassly.

"But, my dear fellow," said Villeneuve elegantly, "I am already there."

"Touché!" hollered Noirtier, a _chaussette_ with only two months to go. He had been in loud high spirits as of late. "Really, whatsyername, you have to admit that was pretty good."

"You idiots are easily impressed," said Chenildieu, growing exasperated. He fidgeted, wishing he could change tables. He glanced around, but it was too late; he was hemmed in, and all the other tables were full.

"How I hate that man," he muttered in Lévy's ear.

"Don't you two fight," Lévy whispered back. "I couldn't bear that now. I'd have to leave. I'd have to put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes."

"Well, rest easy, then, because I'm no pugilist," Chenildieu said with self-deprecating honesty. "I bet you know how to fight, though!"

"I can do it," admitted Lévy. "But I don't like to. I take no pleasure in a victory that requires pummeling someone, requires making them suffer. Of course, such reserve is a fault in this place."

"Well, at least you can do it at all," said Chenildieu.

"No! Don't you get it?" said Lévy forcefully. "It comes at great personal cost, no less than would be extracted from you if you were to muster all your physical strength and win a scrap of your own, such as the one you are _not_ going to have with Villeneuve here. Just because it's moral with me doesn't make it easier. In some ways it makes it harder."

"What are you and the Jew mumbling about?" said Pierrot pryingly.

"None of your damn business," Lévy said crossly.

"Don't you get lippy with me!" snapped Pierrot.

"And don't _you_ patronize _me_, Pierrot, you two-bit homicide...there you are, using the sort of talk one uses with a child! You're not my elder, and you're not my better, either. How dare you demand reverence?"

Chenildieu marveled at his passion. Only minutes before Lévy had been completely demoralized; now he was vehement and animated. Chenildieu had thought _he_ was the one who didn't know how to pick his battles; but here was Lévy, losing his temper at the drop of a few smug words.

"_Youpin!_" snarled his antagonist.

"My God," said Lévy, "don't you ever get tired of that one-note slur? If I were you I should begin to grow embarrassed by my own repetitiveness."

Lévy's words had the ring of a runt's attempt to deflect the taunts of schoolyard bullies, but still they sounded passably fresh in his mouth. It was in the natural attitude of his delivery, in the slow and in-the-moment tone of his voice, in the sense he gave of having risen above Pierrot's insults, if only for a moment.

"Aha!" cackled Noirtier, who was apparently an equal-opportunity cheerleader.

Pierrot, not altogether invested in the argument, merely made a rude gesture and abruptly stopped picking the fight, leaving Lévy to clutch his cutlery in a somewhat warlike manner. Chenildieu, feeling left out, glanced combatively at Villeneuve, who was eating quietly in an attitude of tranquil haughtiness and did not see him.

"You know," Lévy told Chenildieu in private tones, "I'm not the only Jew at Toulon. Not by far. And yet they don't give the others half this much trouble. I'm like the effigy of Jewry for them. I set them off somehow. They leave somebody like Michel Cantor alone––well, he's _haute pègre_, anyway, which demands respect and overshadows anything else they might notice about you, so he doesn't count. But Serge Dreyfus and François Cahen and Bernard Weil aren't _haute pègre_, and they're still left alone. As for them––" he glanced crossly for a moment at Pierrot––"I guess I can't really grudge them for falling back on a pecking order. They're bagnards, but at least they're not _Jew _bagnards! They hate my people as a scraggly outsider group because they _already know what it's like_, and they don't want it to get any worse. Everyone is a Jew in the bagne!"

Chenildieu shrugged his shoulders. He didn't categorically take exception, but the extravagance of Lévy's statement disagreed with him.

"No? You don't think so?" said Lévy. "Tell me, then, why they were singing in the court of Bicêtre, explain to me where that feeling comes from. 'Our chains are heavy, but we will bear them,' they said. 'The world will belong to us.' That attitude, that's what you do when the world hates you. And it's certain that they have felt society's hate. They are still feeling it now. And they will feel it when they quit the bagne––possibly even worse than before, for as much as the people hate a coffle of convicts on their way to Toulon, they hate a _libéré_ more, he's been tainted with the time he's spent in this place. They know in their hearts that this hellhole isn't a place of correction."

"They didn't sing, with me," Chenildieu protested. "They were just a little rowdy, is all. Bullied a kid for crying––poor bastard wasn't more than fifteen––but no singing at all. Maybe a few guys broke into song, but there was no concerted warbling of any sort, of any culturally significant ballads whatsoever."

"Fine then," Lévy said patiently. "They were singing when I was there. You understand my point."

"Yes," said Chenildieu. "I understand it. But you're being silly, frankly, making a statement like that. Jews aren't the only outsider group. The concepts of Jew and minority aren't interchangeable."

"Je-nie-Dieu!" Lévy said, with the laugh of someone driven up the wall. "You knew what I meant! I meant that everyone is a 'Jew' in the bagne insomuch as they all share the most unpleasant aspect of the...the Jewish condition. Really, now." He crammed his mouth full of beans, then added indistinctly, "You shouldn't be contrary merely on principle, you know."

"Don't lecture me," Chenildieu crabbed. "I'll be as contrary as I like." He glared at his meal and tried to shovel a spoonful of soup in the general direction of his stomach out of a sense of duty. He was hungry, but this stuff killed his appetite. He was indeed in a soup mood, though. A _gratinée à l'oignon_ would have been splendid, although a squash potage would have done as well. He suddenly felt the tightness of grief in his chest as he wondered if he would ever eat a bowl of onion soup again. When was the last time he had had one? Had it been good? If he had known it would be his last before being sealed up in the Toulon-shaped coffin of a living death, he would surely have savored the gruyère a bit more.

Having swallowed, he went for another. It wasn't so horrible this time. The first was the worst; after the initial shock, it was all the same. He took his bread, after having examined it for weevils––there were none––and dipped it in his broth. It wasn't bad.

Lévy merely looked mildly at him, not hurt by Chenildieu's snappishness, but rather amused. He took a drink of water and then sprinkled a bit on his bread. "They let mine go dry," he explained. "It keeps! You just have to rejuvenate it."

"If you worked in the kitchen, you could make _pain perdu_," Chenildieu observed. "But, as you don't, you have to settle for _pain retrouvé_."

"That's it," said Lévy. "That's it exactly."

Chenildieu gamely continued his soup. "And it's like you said. Who cares about the bread––they feed us every day! You might still starve, there's no guarantee you won't, but you've less chance of doing so than you might otherwise. Seeing how many people are here for stealing food, or at least for stealing for want of food, one wonders if the swells running this operation think it's all a great big humanitarian project."

"Yes, one wonders," said Lévy, cottoning on. "And the work is just pay for our bread and board."

"And the chains are for our own good, to keep us from running away from such an excellent situation!"

"Yes! It's true!" said Lévy wholeheartedly. "The bagne is a charity––the most stringent charity that ever was!"

"My God, we've just hit upon the true nature of this enterprise! We must tell everyone!" Chenildieu declared. "Perhaps they will finally be grateful!"

"I wouldn't get my hopes up," Lévy said in disapproval. "This lot of ingrates are incorrigible. They don't appreciate all that's being done for them. They want their _freedom!_"

"Bah," said Chenildieu. "Fools! What have they done with their freedom? It brought them here."

"Hush, churl! Have you forgotten already? This isn't a punishment, it is a privilege!" Lévy said severely.

"Ah, right. A privilege we're not allowed to refuse..."

"Exactly. Because we have been chosen. It is a grace. No one asks for grace!"

Chenildieu bowed his head. "Make us martyrs, Lord!" he prayed frivolously.

"Save it for Mass," came a voice from Chenildieu's far left. It was a sixty-something man, still another greencap, with a slow smile and very weary eyes. This was Pelletier, a _cheval de retour._

"Oh, but he needs to practice, Pell'!" said Lévy. "Monsieur is an antichrist in training. Devotion doesn't come naturally to him."

"It really doesn't," Chenildieu confirmed.

"Do you know what his name is?" said Lévy. "The name he was born with was _Chenildieu_. So naturally, he's_ Je-nie-Dieu_."

Pelletier sniggered. "Of course."

Chenildieu gave a brief, cocky smile and decided to take the initiative for once. "Listen," he said, "I didn't come up with that nickname myself."

"Well, who did?" Lévy asked obligingly.

"I think it was Lucien––or maybe François? A junior member of our crew in Caluire, in any case. Yeah, it was Lucien. Strange guy, very quiet; a bit too quiet. You got the sense he was watching you a lot, all that, you know. He had these pale eyes that gave me the willies. Very dependable, though––"

Pelletier made an extravagant show of disengaging his attention, focusing instead on the inside of his soup bowl, which he proceeded to hold up and examine with great and exaggerated care.

"All right, all right," Chenildieu said hurriedly, waving his hands at a frantic speed, as though he were batting at a cloud of invisible gnats. "I'll get there. So we were all drinking one night at a city contact's place in the Croix-Rousse––some really terrible Beaujolais, as I recall––and François––yes, now I remember his role in the story, and why I thought it was him––got terrifically plastered, and everything that came out of his mouth was a slurred mess. It was marvelously entertaining, as the rest of us were all still pretty lucid. François was a little guy. So am I," he acknowledged, "but I know how to pace myself. In any case, he soon was babbling about God knows what, the words becoming more and more messed up each minute. He had that annoying drunken habit of addressing everyone he was talking to by name before saying whatever it was he wanted to say to them. I hate that. Don't tell me, 'Hey, Chenildieu,' just say it! So first I was Chenildieu, then Ch'nildieu, then Ch'ni'dieu. At last I was just Chieu––just after Chi'dieu––but he passed out under the big Jacquard loom in the main room soon after that. Our host didn't like that at all––he was a _canut_, a silkworker, you see, the loom was his own, of course––he ran after François and dragged him away from his precious weaving. It was during the 'Ch'ni'dieu' phase that Lucien piped up––for the first time all day, maybe. He said, 'Ha!' We said, 'What?' Well, he stayed for a few seconds without saying anything, then gave this wild laugh––God, I still remember that giggle, it sent chills down my spine––and said slowly, 'Ch'ni'dieu! Cheni'dieu! Je...nie...Dieu!' He pointed to himself, then crossed his arms and waved them apart, then flung them up and gazed at the high ceiling. It was kind of eerie, really. But it fit, so we all had a laugh, finished the wine, and ended the evening in total oblivion. And that's what I've been ever since."

"I don't have a nickname," Lévy mused. "I've never had a nickname. Appellations, yes––Marseillais. Epithets, certainly––l'Hébreu. But never a sobriquet. You'd think after six years I'd have something. To Greg I'm Léon, and to others...well, you've seen."

"I'm La Pelle sometimes," Pelletier offered. "It's stupid. I don't encourage it."

"And Jean-the-Jack, Jean-the-Jack, Jean-the-Jack," Chenildieu repeated glumly. "_Why?_"

"...because he's a goddamn jack?" suggested Pelletier.

"_Is_ he?" said Chenildieu.

"Yeah, are you kidding?" said Pelletier. "Have you seen him in action? I mean, he once held up a––a whatsit––a carrot, for God's sake! With his shoulder! I saw it with my own eyes!"

"_Caryatid!_" Villeneuve bellowed, breaking in upon the conversation at last. "It's 'caryatid,' you dolt!" He then added, more mildly, "It happened at the town hall, I believe."

"You're both wrong, " said Lévy hurriedly, before Pelletier could retaliate. "Caryatids are female. Technically-speaking, I mean. The thing he held up, one of the figures by the door of the Hôtel de Ville, was an 'atlas.' But everyone still calls them caryatids."

"How the _hell_ do you know that?" Villeneuve demanded, his voice cracking.

"My mother taught me to read when I was four. Books were hard to come by, but everything I found, I read," said Lévy, with the air of one who is reciting a narrative so ingrained in his being that he does not even consider the possibility of censoring its most deeply personal details. "Including the dictionary. Especially the dictionary, actually. That's all."

Villeneuve snorted softly but said nothing.

"He climbed to the roof of the bagne, too," said a blondish young man wedged between Pierrot and Villeneuve. Émile by name, he was thin and sharp-featured, with a ludicrously filthy pair of spectacles clapped onto his face. Ordinarily he would not have had access to eyeglasses, but his vision was so terrifically poor that any useful labor was out of the question until the head of the infirmary could procure him a pair. This had taken months, and until then he had been a sight to see, stumbling around the port and bumping into objects. Needless to say, his apprenticeship in the civilian sector, to a tailor, had been a disaster. He had stolen from his master, but he hadn't gotten far with the money. Until this moment he had been conversing with Pierrot, his chainmate, but Villeneuve's outburst had drawn his attention, and now he too had occasion to enter the conversation. Gesturing with hands clothed in fingerless gloves of ragged grey wool, he indicated the vertical height scaled by Valjean. "Just climbed right up the wall. I have no idea how he did it. He braced himself against the corner in the wall, hoisted himself up, and from there he used invisible nooks and crannies to get up. We were all so afraid he would fall...This was about five years ago; he was on the _demie-chaîne _just then. Left the double chain, got put on the half-chain. I don't get their logic, but then again, I don't understand why they let him climb up the roof, either."

His mind wandering, Chenildieu wondered if the double chain was really that bad. He hadn't been in a hurry to get through his obligatory three days of rest, when he'd first been processed at Toulon; a year of such living did not seem too disagreeable to him. "What's the worst thing about the double chain?" he asked, not caring how his question sounded.

Everyone stared at him. Villeneuve pressed a hand to his brow impatiently, and Lévy said indignantly, "It makes you go crazy!"

"Ah, well..."

"No, really! You can't live chained to a _banc_. Your muscles get impatient and cause this sort of general twitch that eventually makes its way to your brain. You start seeing things. You get homicidal. I saw a man try to strangle the guy next to him. It's really not fun. Just trust me, Chenildieu."

Chenildieu considered this for a moment, then said, "I see."

"People beg to be released just so that they can return to the_ grande fatigue_. So they can see the sky again. So they can move. Sometimes their muscles atrophy so badly that they can't even work anymore. It's––"

"All right!" Chenildieu said. "I understand!" All the same, he wouldn't have minded two or three days of merely lying on his _tollard_...He returned to his soup, wishing that a bit of wine could have been part of the noon rations; he was still chilled. His _casaque_ was only slightly damp––and his vest and chemise were quite dry––but the bottoms of his dark yellow pants were soaked and muddy. He noticed then that he was missing two buttons from the sides––one on his left shin, and one on his right thigh. Already he was disintegrating. Coming apart at the seams already, are you? he asked himself. Pull yourself together! The thought occurred to him that perhaps the pants had already been like that, that he had been issued a pair of pants with buttons missing. In that case, he had been screwed from the very start. The bastards had stiffed him! The _grand pré _was like a contest, a race, a tournament; each competitor deserved to start out with a coat that was not ripped, shoes without holes, and, yes, trousers with all their buttons. They had never even given him a fighting chance! Without meaning to, he wrung his hands. It distressed him beyond reason that he had been deprived of closed seams.

Distantly, a bell sounded. All scrambled to their feet at once; there was a great commotion of clattering _gamelles_ and scraping benches.

"Mass," Lévy told him, for he had not risen.

Chenildieu gave a sullen and rancorous laugh, then got up as quickly as he could, and rushed, with Lévy, to the middle of the group. "It's not enough that our bodies already belong to the law; they want our souls, too, isn't that right?" His brand smarted. He wondered why they would inflict the torments of hell on someone they wanted to save from damnation. This Mass would be the first time he had been to church since he was thirteen.

"They can't save me against my will," he said stubbornly, and folded his arms. Lévy smiled for a fraction of a second but said nothing.

The sun had come out in part, and Chenildieu felt its dazzle begin to dry his clothes. He cursed its benevolence and its power to make him suffer, and he cursed God's as well.


	6. Abécédaire

_A/N: _

Irreparable Abandonment_ rises from the fic-dead._

_Gentle reader, I've been sorry to leave you hanging. Believe me, I didn't forget my duty towards you. _

_But college happened. And I would work sporadically, but I've also been kind of afraid to work on it, not only because of a lack of confidence in the quality of my writing (nothing! has happened! and I use too many modifiers in my dialogue! And, most importantly, I feel like my fiction is incredibly self-indulgent!), but because when I finally do get in a writing groove,_ _I find it hard to focus on anything else. _

_And then a few years ago, some_ ganef _broke in and stole my computer, and while I tried to be as Monsieur Myriel about it as possible, it was_ déchirant, _given that there was many years' worth of un-backed-up creative, sentimental, and scholarly stuff on that hard drive. Given that I'd lost my unpublished bits, notes, and research_ _library, I had an excuse to (irreparably?) abandon the story._

_This excuse was nonsense, and I knew it. _

Le chapitre que voilà, camarades ! _Betaed by Trompe-la-Mort_, _who also gives me half of my best ideas._

_P.S. I promise there's a story arc. With a climax and everything!_

_P.P.S. I'm not an expert on Catholic liturgy. Can you tell?_

_P.P.P.S. Also, I just realized lately that I partially based the character of Lévy off of John Wisehammer from "Our Country's Good," a play about the First Fleet to Botany Bay. I _knew _I'd gotten the whole "garrulous autodidact Jewish convict who gets treated like crap for no reason" thing from somewhere. Seriously, he's basically an unconscious expy of Wisehammer. That play must have made a serious impression on me seeing as a) the similarities were only vaguely familiar even when I reread the play, meaning the character seeped deep into my brain and b) I saw it in 2004, which, while only four years before I created Lévy, is still an eternity—I had only discovered _Les Misérables _the year before. Cryptomnesia: it's a weird thing._

* * *

Chenildieu did not understand Latin. Neither, it was safe to say, did any of the others, except, perhaps, for the handful of wayward bourgeois and penniless_ ci-devants _who had been sucked peripherally, inexplicably, into the bagne, like rainwater down the drain of a bathtub. Villeneuve, Chenildieu was willing to bet, spoke a tiny bit of it, just enough to pretend to be in possession of complete fluency; but he would probably insist that his Latin was that of Cæsar rather than the pope.

The single censer hanging from a chain near the narrow altar was no match for the dust and sweat packed inside the chapel. Together with the incense smoke and the candles, the heat was intolerable.

Chenildieu had been putting off kneeling for as long as possible, but the moment had decidedly come; he was the only one sitting with his legs drawn up to his chest, and it was only a matter of time before the nearest _garde-chiourme_, who was currently pacing up and down the aisle that had been cleared between the rows of convicts, noticed and gave him a bruise to match the others. He yanked off his cap and got to his knees, twisting the _bonnet _in his hands like a wet dishcloth. He scanned the crowd for Valjean, but found him nowhere.

Lévy was still at his side. Anywhere else, Lévy looked like a convict, but kneeling in the chapel, his ball and chain made him look like a penitent.

"Hey, Olivier!" Lévy called.

A thirtysomething greencap in the next row turned and smiled in recognition. His face was thin, made gaunter by straggly dark hair. "Oh, Léon! How long have you been back?"

"Just yesterday. Thank God I'm out of the dungeon, there are some really sinister people in there—" Olivier snorted— "and you don't miss the sun until you don't have it anymore. So now I've been released from the bagne of the bagne, although they did give me this." He indicated his _boulet. _"It's got to be ten livres at the very least. Maybe twenty. Do you have something to augment my _patarasse? _I've gone with just a single rag for some time now, but I can't now, not with this kind of weight."

A _patarasse_, to paraphrase Balzac,was a pad made of rags and oakum, used to deaden the weight of the _manille _on the ankle. Like most such words, it was a nautical term.

"Yeah, of course!" said Olivier, and pulled a sullied bandage out of what must have been a secret pocket inside of his coat. It disappeared inside Lévy's coat just as quickly. "The bastards, I'm telling you, that guard ought to have been the one disciplined, not you!"

"Olivier, working at the infirmary must be softening you...don't you know where we are?"

"We are in a place with rules, all the same," said Olivier.

"Yes...if only they were followed by the Management as much as by us! Listen, Olivier, how's Gregoire?"

"He's healing, Léon. He'll pull through." Lévy's face lit up, and Olivier continued, "That's more than I can say for a good number of the poor buggers that have come in with what he's got. That fever is going around...if they don't keep a lid on it it's going to turn into an epidemic. Still, _he's_ going to make it, at least. It's just that the broken ribs are causing him some pain, so it'll be a while yet until he's back at the _grande fatigue_...but he'll be back on the end of your chain soon enough."

"I'm terribly relieved...although I knew he was still alive, I had no idea whether he was very alive, or only a little bit."

"He's very alive. Even delirious, very alive. He spent a good deal of time ranting about what happened, yelling at the sisters of charity and the guards to get you out of punishment, probably because he knew he'd get away with saying anything in the infirmary —especially while so sick."

"No one," Lévy said with a smile, "will ever convince me Grégoire is not crazy."

"But he's not. He knows exactly what he's doing."

"Sometimes I doubt it. He's with the forces of chaos, that one. Speaking of the forces of chaos, could you spare another bandage? My friend Je-nie-Dieu here has a brand that seems to be going bad."

"Oh Christ!" said Olivier, when he saw the _TFP_. "That's inflamed, my friend. If you take care of it, though, it won't become infected. How barbaric…"

"I knew it!" said Lévy. "Playing nurse has been a boon to your tender heart."

"Do you have any idea how long I had to work at the _grande fatigue _before I got this?" Olivier said indignantly, pointing to the enormous yellow "H" stitched onto the back of his _casaque. _"You think they give jobs like that to everybody condemned _à vioque_?"

"I surely don't," said Lévy. "It was only recently they started giving me _petite fatigue _work part-time, despite the fact I'd already taught a few fellows to read much faster than the Ignorantines ever did…"

Meanwhile, Olivier was quietly and expertly applying a linen bandage to Chenildieu's shoulder, glancing around to make sure no one was watching. The commotion of hundreds of men getting settled cloaked them. "Ideally this would be dressed with some kind of salve, but this should do it for the moment…"

Chenildieu did not like being touched, but he had to admit after he put his _casaque _back on that there was much less friction against the burn. "Thanks," he said. Olivier gave the quick nod of a professional.

"Oh, hey," Chenildieu asked Lévy, wanting to get everything he could out of this encounter with an infirmary worker, "What was that thing you asked Olivier for?"

"A _patarasse_?"

"Yeah, that."

"_Oh fatche de!_" Lévy exclaimed in Marseillais. "Do you not have one yet? Je-nie-Dieu, you're _insane_!"

Chenildieu shrugged hotly. "I knew I should do something, but I didn't know there was a system..."

"Good God, how do you still have an ankle?"

"It's been rough."

Lévy shook his head. "And your chainmate didn't tell you! Who would do such a thing? Who's your chainmate—Jean-le-cric, did you say?"

"Yeah. We're uncoupled right now, there was a foul-up in the forge and they couldn't couple us permanently, but we're getting welded together sometime soon, any day now."

"_Pardi_, you need one. Olivier, give us one more bandage, would you?"

"The hell I will! What the devil do you think I am, a pharmacy? _Mais enfin_, get a rag from the tailors' workshop!"

"But he doesn't have anything for a _patarasse_!"

"Oh, fine," said Olivier. "But this is the last one, I swear. You're right, I _am _soft_-_hearted... any one of these grubby linens is much more than my job's worth."

"But you already stole them, Olivier…"

"Right, but I'm going to have to steal even more if I keep giving them away! These are worth something, you know."

"Oh, hand it over, you greedy scoundrel!"

Olivier passed Chenildieu a small bandage, and Chenildieu stuffed it into his shoe for later.

"If it weren't Lévy asking for it…" Olivier grumbled. "I am not a charity!"

"But the bagne is," Lévy whispered to Chenildieu, and grinned.

A tinny, weak-sounding bell began to ring, and the _aumônier _appeared at the altar. Just like that, Mass had begun. An instant hush fell over the chapel, and a select few prisoners placed at the front of the room, most of them advanced in age, even appeared to take the pageant seriously.

"_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_," said the _aumônier_.

"Is it ever in French?" Chenildieu whispered.

"Only on special occasions," said Lévy.

"Damn it," said Chenildieu. "So it'll be like church when I was a kid, then. I won't understand a damn thing!"

"That's the point," said Lévy. "Oh, they think it's very special, speaking a sacred language no one understands during a service that's incomprehensible to everyone else, but it's not. I can do it too. Hebrew: I can barely speak any, but I can read it. And I know most prayers."

"How can you know prayers when you don't speak it?" asked Chenildieu, wondering where Lévy was going with this.

"Well, I understand the prayers—but I can't speak the language fluently. I mean, what _chiffonnier _does? There are scholars who spend their whole lives just studying the texts—and the texts analyzing the texts, and the texts analyzing _those _texts. I doubt even the _aumônier_ speaks Latin fluently. Competently, maybe…but he's no scholar…" Lévy watched sourly as the chaplain went into the scripture readings, bypassing the Kyrie completely. "This _aumônier, _he's a bastard. The last one was a good man, a really good man—but not in such good health. He died a couple years back, and was replaced with this piece of work."

_Ah, _thought Chenildieu. _So that's what he's so bitter about. _"What'd he do?"

Lévy frowned, but was unable to respond, as the guard circulating in the chapel was approaching them. Both he and Chenildieu made a show of listening intently to the unintelligible muddle coming from the altar. Once the guard was well past them, Lévy resumed. "I have my personal reasons. I won't get into it now. But it's widely known that he's no good. I heard he used to have a small parish in La Garde, but lost his job. They say he fathered a child with a married woman and got away with it for a long time, but then he got a young girl pregnant and the game was up for him. He tried to pay off the family, but unfortunately for him, the family actually took the duties of the priesthood seriously and he got thrown out, although for whatever reason, he wasn't defrocked. I have no idea how he was transferred so easily, nor how he got this job. Must be connections somewhere...then again, it's not exactly a sinecure, is it?"

"Well I'll be damned," said Chenildieu. "I can't say I'm surprised, though..."

"The other one was a good man," Lévy repeated. "I miss him. My first year here was the worst I have ever known, and I truly might not have survived it if not for him. He believed in justice, he believed I should not have been condemned for life. It was the year he died that I tried to escape."

Chenildieu began to be troubled by a strange sensation. The feeling was a bit like pity, but instead of looking down at someone from a height, he felt he was sinking below Lévy, gazing up at him in trouble and agitation. He suddenly realized that what he was feeling was shame. As much as he felt his life sentence was undeserved, he knew that what was even more unjust was the fact that Lévy had been given the same sentence as him. No matter how one felt about killing sniveling informers, it was clear that Lévy's crime did not warrant the same punishment. _A spoon_, he thought. _A pewter spoon. _Could Lévy have picked a more innocuous object of martyrdom? How on earth does one spear oneself on the rounded edges of a spoon?

"It's obvious your sentence was unjust," he said. "Maybe you can appeal it. Get it overturned."

Lévy began to laugh, then stifled it with his hand as another guard on the outer edge of the crowd began to make his way towards the back, where the two of them were kneeling.

"It wasn't just the spoon," Lévy whispered. "It was any number of things...vagabondage, really...there were more ragpickers in Marseille than there were rags, in short. Besides," he added ruefully, "do I really look like I can afford a lawyer?"

"No, you don't. But you don't need one—just appeal—"

Lévy began to grow frustrated, and Chenildieu could not understand why. "First of all, Je-nie-Dieu," he said shortly, "that's not the way the law works. You don't submit an appeal six years into your sentence. Second, you act as though appealing is an easy thing to do—what kind of channels of communication do you think I have open to me? And why do you think the _commissaire _would even give me permission to write to the court? Third, I told you, it _wasn't just the spoon_."

Chenildieu began to ask what the hell it was, then, but something stopped him. He said only, "I didn't mean that they ought to clear you of all charges, just that the sentence ought to be reduced. To be honest, I'm kind of confused about exactly what went on here. What you did is definitely usually punished by lesser sentences—"

"That's the thing, _garri_, you _don't_ know precisely what went on, so you can't advise me."

"Well, there's always reprieves," Chenildieu said, sarcastic now. If Lévy wouldn't let him give him advice sincerely, he would give it mockingly.

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a reponse."

"Or imperial pardons," Chenildieu continued.

They had been talking under their breath, their gaze fixed on the altar, but Lévy stole a glance at Chenildieu's face. Chenildieu had made the mention of _grâces _in a completely deadpan voice, and continued to keep a straight face; but, seeing Lévy's confusion, he gave a sly half-smile.

"I see," said Lévy. "_Fazzoule! _I thought for a moment that Don Quixote had been reincarnated! Listen," he continued, "I recognize that you are looking for at least a small amount of justice in this unjust world. But you must understand that for me, as for you, the only way out now is the two-legged appeal."

Chenildieu glanced at Lévy's feet, which were sprawled to the side rather than tucked under his haunches. As though reading his thoughts, Lévy said, "Yes, I know. I really only have one functional leg. But in theory I have two—as do we all."

They fell silent yet again as the first guard turned back. The guard stayed, and Chenildieu and Lévy were forced to turn their attention completely to the altar. Despite being forced, the silence was more sullen than regretful. Thirty minutes passed, with Chenildieu unable to distract himself from the chaplain's droning; from time to time he would dart a glance at Lévy, and Lévy would tilt his head a bit to the side, as if to say, "What can you do?"

"_Ite, missa est_," said the _aumônier_ at last.

"_Deo gratias_," replied the crowd. Lévy was mouthing the words. As Chenildieu looked on in bewilderment, Lévy elbowed him, then glanced over to the aisle. Chenildieu immediately saw that a _garde-chiourme_ was not twelve feet from them and watching their row intently.

"_Deo gratias!" _Chenildieu said belatedly, then made a show of clasping his hands and bowing his head. He started to cross himself, then Lévy whispered in his ear:

"Don't overdo it!" Then: "When they say _deo gratias_, I actually mean it: thanks be to God that Mass is done with!"

The time of sacraments was over; the reign of the profane had resumed.

* * *

Together, Chenildieu and Lévy walked back to the main part the bagne. Unable to keep pace with the people jostling around them, they drew back to the end of the crowd.

Chenildieu was relieved to be off his knees, but it appeared that Lévy would have preferred more time with, as he had put it, two functional legs; if he did not walk, he could forget the _boulet _was there. The chain was long enough that he was able to take almost a full step before being confronted with the cannonball on the end. He swore and bent down to reinforce his _patarasse _with the bandage that Olivier had given him. Chenildieu stopped, but not before looking around to check for guards.

"I'm so sick of dragging this bloody thing," Lévy said unnecessarily. He looked up at Chenildieu and shook his head wearily. "And it's only been a few days; imagine the poor bastards in Lorient who have them all the time, or so I hear...military prisoners..."

"Does it hurt?" asked Chenildieu.

"Not the ankle so much," said Lévy, getting up. "You get used to that. But the extra weight gives me pain in my shins—one for dragging it, and the other for compensating." He gave the _boulet _an angry jerk. "You know, the last link of the chain's only attached to the _manille _with a padlock. Sometimes I fantasize about picking that padlock and putting this...ensemble on someone else. Someone more deserving."

"Are we talking a _fagot, _or a _gaffe_?" asked Chenildieu.

"Either one," said Lévy. "The latter is an enticing possibility, given the right _équipage_. Let them see how it feels to have the _manille _on the other foot, so to speak. To be honest, I think about that a lot. It's one of the ways I stay sane."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I imagine them in my position, and I in theirs, and then imagine what I'd do. Sometimes I'm merciful. Sometimes I'm not."

Speaking as pompously as he could, Chenildieu said, "I wonder if anyone would notice, if youwere to take the liberty of prematurely relieving yourself of the object in question and throwing it in the drink—would they know you'd done it, or would they assume the _commissaire_'d had it removed?"

"That would be an interesting experiment," Lévy said thoughtfully, "but I have neither pick nor shim, and my only means of obtaining such tools is currently in the hospital." He winced suddenly. "A cramp...if you could give me your arm, _bicou_, that would be most kind."

Chenildieu briefly considered refusing, given Lévy's churlish behavior during Mass, but seeing the way that pain had quite taken the wind out of his sails and that he had not a leg to stand on, he relented; with a deliberate gesture, he held out his left elbow, and Lévy gripped it tightly. Chenildieu realized that Lévy was almost a head taller than him, and wondered if letting the other man lean on him for support was such a good idea.

"Here, put your arm around my shoulders instead," he said. "I think that's easier—"

"No," said Lévy, limping.

"Why not?" Chenildieu asked, too jolted by Lévy's limping to focus on being indignant at his curtness, and unable, now that Lévy was leaning on him, to withdraw his elbow even if he had wanted to.

"_Primo_, because I would rather not touch anything in the region of your shoulder blades; _secundo_, because if a guard catches us, it's easier to separate quickly."

"But I'm only supporting you!"

"True," said Lévy, "but it is better to be prudent—do you really want a repeat of this morning?" Chenildieu could only concede the point.

Suddenly, they heard jeers and hollers coming from those ahead of them in the crowd.

"What the...?" said Chenildieu.

Lévy frowned. "Whatever it is, it can't be good..."

They reached the courtyard in front of one of the _salles_, and were greeted by the surreal sight of a man sitting on a barrel with a sign on his chest. Chenildieu realized that this must be the explanation for the jibes and whistles they had heard.

Lévy stumbled, and Chenildieu almost fell trying to catch him. Once he regained his balance, Lévy let go of Chenildieu's arm and took a step back, staring at the ghastly spectacle in disbelief. "God, no!" he said at last. "They got him! I thought he got away!" He turned aside, clenching his fists.

"Who is that? What's going on?"

"I don't know him, I don't even remember his name, but he escaped months ago...I thought he had made it."

His surprise wearing off, he began to walk again. Chenildieu offered him his arm, but Lévy pushed it away and snapped, "No, I can manage for myself."

"But you _asked me_—!" Chenildieu exploded, but Lévy cut him off.** "**Why do they insult him?" he cried. "As though any one of them would have done any differently! Next time they will try, and they will fail, and they will end up in his place!"

Chenildieu was so angry words failed him; wounded and furious, he could only stare at Lévy. He had the sudden urge to push him off his feet; Lévy was already unbalanced, and the thing would have been easily done. But then his imagination leapt suddenly to what the consequences of such an action might be—a beating, the dungeon, a court-martial for fighting—and he didn't act on his impulse.

"They can choke on their ridicule!" Lévy said.

But there weren't only insults. A few voices were sending out words of encouragement as well, some heartfelt and others tinged with irony: "Better luck next time!" "Happens to the best of us!" "Next time take me too, eh? Trust me, you'll make it if I'm there!" The recipient of these comments smiled wistfully at the sincere ones, and ruefully at the ironic ones.

Lévy added his voice to the chorus of support: "_Courage, camarade!_" He pushed through the crowd, making his way closer to the barrel. Stupefied, Chenildieu hung back.

Now at the front of the crowd, Lévy called hoarsely, "Feel no shame!"

The man lifted his head.

As quickly as he could, Lévy blurted out, "Pay them no heed; your misfortune is not your fault!" And he doffed his cap and held to his breast.

Excessively ironed though he was, the man managed to touch his hand to his forehead in a gesture of recognition.

The crowd parted with a nervous ripple as a _garde-chiourme _made his way up to the barrel. "All right, break it up over here!" he shouted.

Lévy stood aside, but kept his _bonnet_ on his breast.

"Put your hat on!" the guard ordered.

Sometimes, those in the most precarious of positions are those most inclined to leap off the brink. There are only so many punishments that can be heaped upon one's head before one stops suffering them with good humor. With the rage of the persecuted, Lévy sprang from this precipice. "Can't you leave me alone for one _minute!_" he bellowed, and hurled his cap to the ground.

Chenildieu cringed and held his breath. He had never heard a convict raise his voice to a guard; on some level, he had assumed that it would be as fatal as striking one. He didn't understand why Lévy would do something so monumentally stupid, but he did know that a man who would permit himself to shout at a _surveillant _could not possibly be in his right mind.

As the _garde-chiourme _raised his stick, Lévy dropped to his knees and buried his face in his arms. Chenildieu looked away, at that moment forgiving Lévy all his discourtesies.

As he did so, he noticed Valjean walking towards the back of the crowd, his eyes fixed on his shoes.

* * *

When Chenildieu had last seen Valjean, he had been frightened by his face, which displayed the look of hatred that is overjoyed at realizing its goal. What was the cause of this joy? There are no two ways about it: Valjean had learned to read.

Not fluently, of course, or even close to it; but that morning he had made the leap—from coaxing sounds out of the page arbitrary sign by arbitrary sign, to having the meaning written on the face of the words like a familiar friend and not a cold stranger. As is typical for someone who has reached that stage in their reading ability, anything printed caught his eye. He had mastered numerals first, because they didn't have to be strung together to form words; each number had meaning by itself. He had already known that the markings on coins corresponded to their value, but it was only at the friars' school that he had learned how they could be arranged into larger quantities; the moment where he had examined his _bonnet_ and understood that his identity of twenty-four-six-hundred-one was written as _24601 _had been one of mixed triumph and heartbreak. "So that's how my name is spelled," he had thought.

It was only later that he even had a thought for the spelling of _Jean_. When he asked the Ignorantines how his last name was spelled, they had been confused. "Are you sure that's your surname?" they had asked. "It's so close to your Christian name—that can't be a real family name." Valjean had been too baffled to be angry at their presumptuousness. All he could say was that if he had another surname, he had never heard of it, and neither had his sister. The friars had been unsure how to spell it—how did they know it wasn't Vallejan, or Valgens? The most thoughtful among them had promised that he would look in the _matricule _himself, so as to be sure. He accomplished this promise, and Valjean learned with all certainty how to write his name.

This done, he began to read words. He became obsessed with being able to read a book, a real one, with paragraphs of text; but all the friars had was the Bible, and the language in that was much too complicated yet. So he had to content himself with the exercises the friars gave him, some of them taken from yellowed primers, some of them invented by the Ignorantines themselves. The actual content he was given to sharpen his reading skills on was always religious in nature, and he longed for something else; after all, he was planning to use his newfound literacy to destroy God, church, king, and country. He couldn't shake the feeling that his power to read would somehow be conditional; since it was clergymen teaching him, couldn't they also control his knowledge, even take it away? For this reason, the Bible would not have satisfied him, even if he had been able to read it. He would have much preferred a page of Voltaire, Rousseau, even d'Alembert, had he known who they were.

To his chagrin, there was a great scarcity of text around him; the written word was elusive. He did not work in any of the offices, even as a floor-sweeper; and none of his chainmates had been predisposed to letter-writing, let alone journal-keeping, which was quite forbidden. His _souliers _were not even marked with the word "galérien," for this custom came and went. The only text he saw was letters—large, disembodied block letters with harsh and angular serifs. These letters appeared on _casaques_, indicating the wearer's place of work; lately, too, they had been appearing more frequently, and in different combinations, on the skin of new arrivals. Chenildieu had tried to hide his initially, but once Valjean had noticed that something on Chenildieu's back was hurting him, Chenildieu had been quick to spill everything—and quick to complain about it. "Good, I'm on your left," he'd said. "Thank God for that." Too curious to simply ignore his annoying chainmate, Valjean had gruffly asked him why on earth that should matter. "Means my right side's protected," Chenildieu had said blithely. "So my shoulder's less of a target!"

In any case, the repertoire of brands and labels was limited, comprising no more than a half dozen letters. All he wanted was a real word in his field of vision, a word that would prove to him that he was capable of reading secular things in the real world, not just bits of religion in the _vase clos _of the friars' school.

The sign around the neck of the man on the barrel provided him with this opportunity. Valjean was unsure of what would be written on it; he knew that someone was being punished, but for what, he didn't know; it could have been many things. Punishment was common enough, and Valjean wasn't interested in the details. What did interest him was the sign. When Valjean had caught a glimpse of it, he had seen letters; he knew that those letters would be arranged into a word—maybe more than one. He had to get closer. At the same time as Lévy, he made his way towards the barrel; but unlike Lévy, he did not have to force his way through, as the others moved aside for him willingly.

Once he arrived, he paid no attention to the man who was wearing the sign. The man was only the back cover of a book—of no interest. He squinted fiercely at it. There were two words. They both ended in _é_; they were both descriptive in some way. The first word started on the same sound it ended with. _É _again. _É—é. V-A—va. D-É—dé. Évadé. _Escaped! An escapee! But the word, unqualified, was not enough; Valjean knew that well. It was easy enough to escape; the hard part was staying that way.

That's what the second word was for: to qualify the first. _R-A—ra. M-E—me. N-É. Né. Ramené. _Brought back. _Évadé ramené_. An apprehended fugitive. Like himself, four times over.

He laughed. It was a dark and jagged sound, hollow and yet strangely resonant.

So that's what it was, then. The man had run; he had been caught; he had been marked out and exposed to the ridicule of the entire _chiourme_, who would mock his failure to consummate the deed. Here was a tangible reminder that there was no escape.

Valjean bowed his head, his eyes flaming with mixed satisfaction and despair. He knew he could not stop the administration from pinning labels on him, from dictating the terms of his existence; but at least he would be able to read anything they might scrawl on or about him.

That was enough. He'd proved the point to himself that he wanted to prove; he had no desire to read the sign any more. He turned away and returned to the back of the crowd. The printed words _évadé ramené_ stayed in his head, an _idée fixe. _They stayed there as he went inside with the others; they stayed there as he filed into the _salle_; they stayed there as he sat on his plank bed, his chin in his hands, not paying attention to the convicts around him who were all enjoying the small amount of free time they had that afternoon. He shook his head and curled up on the plank, drawing his thin blanket over himself to block out the world. Only then did the words go away.


End file.
